Untitled
by misprint
Summary: Remus was used to the betrayals of the body. He was not used to Sirius.


Untitled

Remus was used to the betrayals of the body. He was not used to Sirius.

_Five times,_ he thinks to himself, alone in Grimmauld Place, a cup of untouched tea slowly cooling in his palms. _The lake, the forest, the lake again, the owlery, and that attic. That was it. _He sits, settling into bones that have become, without his permission, old. _That was all there ever was._

Sirius is here more than ever. Remus sees the shape of his absent body against the walls.

* * *

The first time Remus saw Sirius naked was down at the lake in that first September. Balmy, he remembers, almost too warm. James was naked too, of course, and Peter stripped down to his pants, but it was Sirius he remembers, peeling his t-shirt off a his wire-thin back to reveal skin so pale it could be translucent, the latent cords of muscle that stuck out along his shoulders and neck. Sirius the boy, Sirius the virgin, Sirius grinning over his shoulder at Remus who had shed only his sweater and shoes.

"The matter, Remus?" He had asked, flashing canines that were too sharp, too knowing. It was the first time he had called him that, instead of Lupin. His name on Sirius' tongue was closer than the nakedness, and stranger. "Kit off then," he had ordered, "don't be a fuckin' doxy."

"D'you think we'll get caught?" Peter had asked, looking up at the castle with a nervous grin.

"No one's going to be finishing their breakfast quick just to get a look at your fat arse," – Sirius, his penchant for cruelty, of course.

"Just your skinny one, right mate?" James had shot back, and as they laughed, Remus slipped his Muggle jeans down, kicked his shoes off, nervously exposing flesh to the sun. He hadn't liked it, the nakedness. He didn't want the reminder of his skin, and what was underneath it.

"Ooh," Sirius minced in falsetto. "The lady emerges from her dressing room." But he had met Remus' glare with a grin, a genuine one, hangdog and admiring, and though Remus should have been upset, all he remembers is the feeling of the sun all over his body.

"Right, let's go," James had said, and they had run, the four of them, invincible in youth, strong in taut, new bodies; they dove into the weird, icy depths as though they would not die.

* * *

Hogwarts was a pentacle, enclosing. James and Sirius grew into one another, attached at the hip, a twin shadow springing up against the stone walls with Peter running behind and Remus, himself, younger and thinner, hands buried in his pockets.

At least that's how it was at first; halfway through the year, Sirius began dogging him as though he, Remus Lupin, was of special interest, tousling his hair, punching his arm, jutting a shoulder into his and reading off his parchment in class. Sirius' hands, so difficult to keep to himself. Sirius' grinning face, appearing upside down as he hung off the top bunk, shooting sparks at Remus as he was trying to read, elbowing his way firmly and irrevocably in.

"Your aunt's?" He had asked, wrinkling his nose as Lupin packed an overnight bag he would not need. "What's your aunt need you a whole night for?"

"She's sick."

"Why aren't your parents going, then?"

"They're busy."

James had been the one who had figured it out eventually, but Sirius was the one who would follow Remus down the halls, his voice riding in his ear like an insect. Where are you going? Where does your aunt live? Where'd you get that scratch, you been brawling? Why are you limping? He remembers so well; that mouth, so close to his ear, that hand tugging at his sleeve. The smell of dirty socks and skin and freshly washed hair, so black and messy that he was often mistaken for James at a distance. The grin he wore like a crack of light. Strange that this is the Sirius he remembers the most, the thirteen year old with an unseemly swagger and a curious mind. Where are you going? Annoyed as Remus had been, he couldn't help but be flattered that such a mind was being applied to himself, and not to James. Applied to his deceitful body and his sequestering of it, his withdrawing, his shutting in and shutting out. Sirius did not want to be shut out.

But it had to have been that way, Remus thinks now. Sirius had to have muscled his way in somehow, otherwise a friendship as strange as theirs might never have existed.

* * *

_Wicked_ is what Sirius had said when James finally forced Remus into a confirmation of their suspicions. The same _wicked_ that he usually reserved for fists, blood, and women. The same _wicked_ that denoted admiration, excitement, that denoted the want to get in.

"It's not wicked," Remus had snapped, face hot. "It's a fucking _curse_, Sirius."

"Ooh, will you listen to Fang here?" Sirius had laughed excitedly, throwing an arm around his friend's shoulder. "And so emerges the madness within. He swears like a sailor! Watch your tongue, salt."

"This is not a game," Remus had said, terrified by the closeness. "This is not bloody _funny._"

"It's sort of funny, mate," James had grinned crookedly at Sirius. "And actually…well, we came up with a sort of…a sort of _plan_…"

Sirius had laughed, knocking his palm against Remus' chest twice. They echoed, heart beats. He remembers with startling accuracy the shape of his friend's side, pressed to his own. He remembers the pulsing, the quickness. He sits now, years later, staring up at his Sirius' framed ancestors on the walls. He notices in them a resemblance that he would have denied earlier, a frequency of jawbones, of brows, of eyes. Sirius' body, showing up in the strangest of places.

"Don't look," is what he had whispered into the darkness of the Shrieking Shack, one year later. He remembers it; the itch under his skin, the tensing of muscle, the raw, dirty taste crawling up the back of his throat that signaled the moon, inexorable, climbing the sky. Peter and James were there, of course, but he was speaking to Sirius. Was it excitement in his eyes, Remus thinks now, as he stood tense, ready, waiting to change? Was it hunger? His bones, breaking. His tidy nails, lengthening. His body, so in the dark and yet so lit up by his friend's gaze, every inch exposed.

"Don't worry, mate," Sirius had whispered, and Lupin slipped under, the skin receding and the fur rushing out from within.

* * *

_The lake,_ Remus thinks, turning the cup carefully in his hands. He can see the dregs swirling, silt like, through the cream. He wouldn't usually be doing this, sitting alone and thumbing through his memories like old photographs, but now it seems of particular importance, this cataloguing, this careful and painstaking remembrance. He knows that he will not be able to do it in the morning.

It was June, and the moon was slipping behind the trees.

Remus and Sirius were sprawled by the water, breathing hard – Sirius flat on his back, Remus hunched with his palms pressed hard against the back of his head. James and Peter were in detention – he remembers this even now, so clear - assigned to night duty in the kitchen. "No escape, not with them house elves watching our every bloody move," James had said this. "You think Padfoot can keep you in proper order?"

He almost hadn't. Remus was ashamed. He sat with his friend as the sky lightened to the east, young bodies shining with sweat, cataloguing their injuries; a bloody lip, a savaged wrist, a bruise blooming darkly along Sirius' jawbone.

"Piss off," he had muttered, fending off Remus' desperate ministrations, his good intentions. "Essence of Murtlap will sort me out."

"It shouldn't be like this," Remus was saying, already well versed in debts and payments. "You shouldn't have to put yourself through this. I've done it alone before, I can do it again."

"Don't be stupid," Sirius said briefly, knocking his hand away with two knuckles and sitting up. Remus saw the muscles in his stomach, his shoulders. He saw the way they rose, in breath. Saw how they fell. As Sirius settled, groaning, their arms pressed.

There must have been something, he thinks now. Some unseen signal, some hex, some strange magic. Or maybe there wasn't. Maybe it was there all along, riding in their bodies, waiting to be let out. He wishes, now, that he had not tried so hard to forget. All that is left to him is fragments; Sirius' moppy, damp head finding his shoulder; Sirius' hand knocking against his own in the lush grass; Sirius' clumsy, salty mouth finding his shoulder, his throat, his jaw, and holding.

It hurts.

* * *

_The forest. The lake again._ Sirius fought, Remus realizes now, with every inch; he unleashed himself on Remus like an affliction after they returned to Hogwarts in September, his hand always at his elbow, his mouth always at his ear. Remus wanted sometimes to yell at him; tell him to leave it, forget it, to fuck off, but that morning was never overtly spoken of, never even alluded to by either him or Sirius. It lay between them, settling like silt, undetermined in shape. Remus took to cataloguing it along with the transformations that ripped him apart once a month; the betrayals of the body, the weird urges and indiscretions of flesh.

It seemed to be so with Sirius; he had a girlfriend, naturally, an exchange student from Beauxbatons named Odette whom Remus can now only recall by her bare face and her hair that hung like a lank, thick curtain along her shoulders. But it was Remus, not Odette, that Sirius smooth-talked into the Forbidden Forest with a tense mouth and a persistent grip. It was Remus, not Odette, that went back to the lake with Sirius a month later after swearing, _swearing_ that it was the last time, pale and taut. It was Remus, not Odette, that bore the first marks, the salty tang of Sirius' mouth and the painstaking ministrations of his needy, clumsy love.

Remus closes his eyes now, breathing out through his nose. Everything is in flashes, overexposed, like photographs left in the potion for too long. Sirius' jaw knocking his in a breathless, fumbling kiss; Sirius' body and all it's awkward angles jammed with his, hitting the soft moss of the forest floor; Sirius' sour breath in his wet mouth as his hips bucked and a weird animal noise, a keening, stemmed up from his throat. Who knew that it was possible to feel so much, he thinks, as though his heart was brimming and overflowing and spilling sloppy and rampant through his veins? Who knew that it was possible to feel so much and yet feel nothing the next moment but a hollowness, a weird, vague shamefulness?

"We should head down to the Shrieking Shack sometime with some Firewhiskey," Sirius would say, sliding a glance sideways at him. "Just you an' me?"

"I don't think so," Remus would reply. "Exams are coming up, got to be sharp." Time still existed for him in intangible, everlasting quantities, and he would deal with Sirius later, figure things out in the distant future, not now. How mournful he feels now, how stupid. How much he wishes he had gone.

A reprieve: On the last day of classes they had snuck up to the owlery together, and at the summit of the steps Sirius had reached down and taken Remus' hand in his own, fingers roughly entwining. This was something that he had, before, reserved only for Odette. Remus' heart had given a painful, sad little thump, knocking at the front of his ribs. In the other hand Sirius had one of his Muggle cigarettes that he was smoking with much fanfare and sideways glances. Remus' had smiled, gently amused at Sirius the boy, peering out through the eyes of Sirius the man, still a bully, still posturing.

Perhaps it had been that rush of affection, but it had happened again, and this time, Remus didn't even think about it. He almost didn't mind. The nervousness, the quickness dissolved, and it was like slipping underwater, it was like giving up. Sirius had stubbed the cigarette out on the rough, stone wall and they laid themselves out on the owlery floor, bodies moving in sync, their ears cocked towards the door for coming footsteps. Remus remembers, yes, so clearly; Sirius, his black hair weirdly short, the shadows of stubble along his slick upper lip, surrounded everywhere by feathers.

* * *

Remus starts, as though awakening, and unfolds himself from the armchair. He leaves the living room, and goes to the kitchen, which is empty, in the way that he usually believes things to be empty; still, he is not alone. Sirius, he thinks, is behind the chairs. Sirius is under the table, hiding like a joke.

Remus was the first to say it: "he's gone". Taking Harry by the shoulders and speaking like a professor. And yet, he himself almost does not believe this – here, in the dark, pouring the dregs of an untouched tea down the drain, it is hard to sort out these particulars. Surely his old friend is up in the attic, lonesome and brooding, waiting for him.

"Yes," Remus says aloud, to no one. The attic was the last place, and it is the one that will stay with him the longest, he knows, tugging at his sleeve like a child, like a young boy. It had happened only a month ago, and it was a full moon; Remus remembers the bitterness of potion on his palette, the nausea of an animal contained. Sirius had found him in the kitchen, alone, clearing up after one of Molly's suppers. For a reason that Remus will never know, Sirius shadowed him that night, teased him like they were young. He called him names, he grinned in his ear, he offered him drinks. He invited him up to the attic. He begged him inch by inch, coaxing and prodding and swearing until Remus was in his bed, his heart howling inside him. It felt like bursting. It felt like spilling. When it was over, Sirius had asked him not to leave.

"I'm lonely, Moony," is what he had said, embarrassed. Remus knew him, knew the vulnerable spots he was turning to show. "Stay for a bit, mate?"

"You know," Remus had said carefully, "I may…soon be involved."

"Oh, yes," Sirius had said, with a bitter smile. "_Her_."

And that was it. That was what it was. Remus leans now at the sink, the cold teacup in his hands. He is not sure where to stand. He is not sure where to go. Home, perhaps, or to Hogwarts, to see Harry, to see James in Harry. To Dumbledore, who gave him so much. To Tonks, perhaps, who will be grieving too, who will curl her young body against his and invite him in.

He says the name out loud, and listens to slumbering house.


End file.
